Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom is a woman born on March 1st, 1983 and is currently 37 years old. Born in a poor family with no goal in sight except working in the fields her parents owned, she was blessed with the opportunity to go to school as it is an opportunity given to not many in India. Developing for sports and viewing the success of many athletes pushed her into starting boxing.
A movie was created in the honor of Mary Kom by the same name and featured her life in 122 minutes in the shoes of Priyanka Chopra Jonas. The film begins with a very young girl that finds a glove and becomes very interested in the sport. Her father, being an ex-boxer worries about her daughter getting hurt and hurting her face which could potentially result in a rejection for marriage. People that live in poor areas such as the Mangte family believe that women are only raised to be given in marriage one day when they grow old enough, but Mary showed her dad that he was wrong when she won the Women’s World Amateur Boxing Championship.
After many victories in her matches, Kom falls in love with a boy and wishes to start a family with her husband. The couple decides to have children despite the constant denial of her coach who sees a lot of potential in the boxer and believes that her career would be over if she chooses to have those children and take care of them as a mother.
Chungneijang after a few years, people begin to not recognize, and this is the push that motivates her to come back to her boxing career. She approaches her coach that abandoned her because she decided to have children and proved that a married woman could still pursue an athletic career even after giving birth. She trained long and hard to become fit and learned moves all over again. Taking care of the children became a responsibility for her husband and he gladly accepted to take them and let his wife pursue a boxing career leaving behind those that believe men are supposed to work and not take care of the children and that women should be the ones doing those tasks.
Going against her father’s wishes to pursue a career while being born in India is an action that takes a lot of guts to make. She was able to successfully make a career and prove that being born to be wedded one day is not the reason women are born. Furthermore, giving birth and then trusting her husband to take care of the children showed the world that marriage does not mean the end of a sports career and that women do not always have to be the ones to take care of children and food.
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